Deck 8: The Continental Tradition

Question 1

What was the fundamental philosophical question for Albert Camus?

A) Does God exist?
B) Is there any reason not to commit suicide?
C) What should I wear to my funeral?
D) Will I survive death?

Answer 1

B

Question 2

Who searched for a group of rules that accounts for the social complexities of even so-called primitive cultures?

A) Jacques Derrida
B) Michel Foucault
C) Martin Heidegger
D) Claude Levi-Strauss

Answer 2

D

Question 3

Identify a true statement about Jean-Paul Sartre.

A) He believed that there is a specific essence that defines what it is to be human.
B) He believed that a human being is a self-aware or conscious subject that creates its own future.
C) He believed that the essence of being human is being rational.
D) He believed that God created human beings in accordance with a divine concept.

Answer 3

B

Question 4

Identify a true statement about Søren Kierkegaard.

A) He scorned Hegel's system, in which the individual dissolves into a kind of abstract unreality.
B) He read Arthur Schopenhauer and became convinced that the world is driven by cosmic will, not by reason.
C) He believed that systematic philosophy, with its grandiose schemes, with its mind-body and other dualistic splits, with its metaphysics and metaphysical traditions, must give way to more original kind of thinking.
D) He agreed with Friedrich Nietzsche as to the nature of the cosmic will.

Question 5

Critical theory is associated with _____.

A) Jacques Derrida
B) Michel Foucault
C) Martin Heidegger
D) Jürgen Habermas

Question 6

For Albert Camus, suicide is a better option than simply rebelling against the absurdity of life.

Question 7

Which term is NOT generally associated with Jacques Derrida?

A) epistemes
B) deconstructive method
C) semiotics
D) the free play of signifiers

Question 8

Arthur Schopenhauer thought that human actions are driven by a blind, purposeless cosmic will.

Question 9

What did Michel Foucault claim concerning epistemes?

A) They form a continuous series leading to the advancement of truth over superstition.
B) They are "created realities" that are the ground of true and false in each era.
C) They are discovered, not made.
D) They can be the basis of objective truth claims.

Question 10

Which philosophical tradition includes existentialism and phenomenology?

A) Analytic philosophy
B) absolute idealism
C) Continental philosophy
D) pragmatism

Question 11

Who made the study of multiplicity the centerpiece of his thought?

A) Michel Foucault
B) Ferdinand de Saussure
C) Jürgen Habermas
D) Gilles Deleuze

Question 12

According to Albert Camus, how can we give life meaning and value?

A) Kill yourself.
B) Seek God.
C) Rebel against the absurd.
D) It can't be done.

Question 13

What would Jacques Derrida say about the definitive meaning of a text?

A) He maintained that the definitive meaning of a text means whatever the author intended for it to mean.
B) He maintained that the definitive meaning of a text means whatever the reader understands it to mean.
C) He maintained that the definitive meaning of a text means whatever the majority of experts take it to mean.
D) He maintained that no definitive meaning of a text could ever be established.

Question 14

Who among the following thought it was impossible to totalize everything that exists as nothing is finite?

A) Jacques Derrida
B) Michel Foucault
C) Martin Heidegger
D) Alain Badiou

Question 15

For French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, what is culture?

A) a system of signs
B) a conversation
C) a common heritage
D) a common language

Question 16

An authentic existence can be found, according to Heidegger, only if one can _____.

A) believe in God
B) believe in the superior man
C) take responsibility for one's choices
D) understand oneself as a totality

Question 17

According to Jean-Paul Sartre, a human being is abandoned and that means _____.

A) technology no longer serves human needs
B) there is no God
C) there is no other life in the solar system
D) we must all die

Question 18

Which of the following statements is true about Martin Heidegger?

A) He was sympathetic to the Marxist worldview.
B) He believed that, as a consequence of the nonexistence of God, nothing about Being is necessary.
C) He abandoned his belief in Being as the basic principle of philosophy.
D) He believed that people are basically ignorant about the thing that matters most-the true nature of Being.

Question 19

_____ developed transcendental phenomenology, whose purpose was to investigate phenomena without making any assumptions about the world.

A) Jean-Paul Sartre
B) Martin Heidegger
C) Edmund Husserl
D) Søren Kierkegaard

Question 20

The tradition in philosophy whose roots trace to Modern rationalism eventually came to be known as Analytic philosophy.

Question 21

Claude Lévi-Strauss abandoned Saussure's methods while conducting his ethnographic research.

Question 22

For Jacques Derrida, the meanings of words are not stable.

Question 23

In Jürgen Habermas' ideal speech situation, only those with the knowledge of and respect for the controlling ideology of a society should be allowed to participate in a debate.

Question 24

Politically, Sartre considered himself a Marxist and accepted much of the Marxist view of historical events.

Question 25

Edmund Husserl's "phenomenological reduction" is the process of investigating phenomena without making any assumptions about the nature or existence of an external, objective world.

Question 26

For Foucault, genealogy wasn't about power; it was about knowledge.

Question 27

Michael Foucault wrote The History of Sexuality.

Question 28

Jürgen Habermas' views were considered Marxist.

Question 29

For structural linguists like Ferdinand de Saussure, the meaning of a sign (signifier) rests in its contrast with other signs that could be, but are not, present.

Question 30

In his study on discourses, Michel Foucault discovered a steady advancement of truth over superstition as time goes by.

Question 31

Alain Badiou held that philosophers can learn nothing from mathematicians.

Question 32

Heidegger and Sartre are quite different philosophically, despite the superficial resemblance.

Question 33

According to Sartre, humans are both thrown into existence and condemned to freedom.

Question 34

Jacques Derrida followed the deconstructive method.